Tag: value proposition

I was privileged to be present at a talk a couple of weeks ago, hosted by one of the world’s foremost authorities on strategic marketing – Professor Malcolm McDonald. Malcolm, who is now closing in on being 80 years old and still actively works on the operating boards of the world’s biggest brands. Not only that – he’s also the chairman of no less than 6 companies and has written over 40 books on Marketing, Sales and Account Management. Malcolm then, knows his stuff and during his long career – he has witnessed and assessed just about every marketing trend you can possibly imagine. So it’s with great pleasure that I’m able to pass on to you 3 kernels of wisdom from a true marketing legend.

Kernel No.1 Identify your core market

If you can delight this group, you will have a resilient customer base. Everybody has different needs and the broader your target group, the more generalised and average your product or service has to become to meet them. Average products delight no-one, so find your core market and commit to delighting just these people.

Kernel No.2 Define your ‘must’ target

Your ‘must’ target is an objective (usually turnover) that you absolutely have to achieve at a defined point in the future (typically either in 3 or 5 years from now). It’s not about projections – it’s about setting your business a bold and aggressive target and saying “no matter what happens – in ‘x’ years, this business must meet that objective”.

Once you have your ‘must’ target, you can compare it to the projections you have in place for your current strategy. The task then is to understand how to plug the gap between your current projected earnings and your ‘must’ target.

According to Professor Malcolm, there are only 4 ways in which this can be done.

By venturing into new markets (generally a high risk and costly strategy)

Kernel No.3 Answer the question “Why should I buy from you?”

Here’s a list of typical answer that 99% of companies will give you when asked this question:

We have better quality than our competitors

We have a great reputation

We get good results for our customers

We’re very responsive

You can trust us

We are innovative

We are the leading provider of….

If this is your answer, you risk sounding exactly the same as your competitors. You must be able to prove to your target audience that dealing with you will give them a distinct advantage – not merely help them avoid being disadvantaged. You need to deliver a true value proposition.

So that’s 3 kernels of marketing wisdom from a true marketing legend and in keeping with his advice, I’m going to leave you with the businesshands value proposition.

The businesshands value proposition

At businesshands, we offer a better standard of marketing and a broader range of marketing expertise then you would ever get if you were to spend the same budget on marketing personnel in-house. We also offer greater flexibility in terms of choosing and changing the blend of skills you need throughout the year and by allowing you to increase or decrease your budget as your needs dictate.

That means our outsourced marketing department services will put your business at a strategic advantage by (i) having better marketing skills (ii) by being agile and being better able to adapt to market conditions and (iii) financially – enabling you to spend more money in other areas of your business.

If you would like help with your value proposition, your marketing strategy or any other area of you would like to discuss our outsourced marketing department services, drop us an email or call a member of our marketing team today on 0207 459 4788.